“We did hear that as of 7:45 a.m. yesterday morning, she is alive in the eyes of the Social Security Administration,” Gardner said.

However, Gardner said, it could take up to 10 days before Lawson is able to use her Medicare benefits at hospitals and doctors’ offices.

Gardner is still worried her mother will lose Veterans Administration benefits she’s entitled to through her late husband.

Although a Social Security Administration spokesman said such incidents are rare, they are not unheard of.

Roughly 2 million Social Security beneficiaries die each year. In nine out of 10 cases, the government relies on relatives, friends and funeral homes to report deaths. Banks, the U.S. Postal Service, and government agencies report the remaining 10 percent of deaths.

Nobody knows why Lawson’s status was changed from dead to living in a government database on Jan. 11.

Gardner thinks somebody reporting an actual death may have given the wrong Social Security number, changing her mother’s status in a computer database.

The Social Security Administration’s policy is to match names and birthdates from death reports to existing records to prevent such mistakes.

“She’s not the only one this has ever happened to,” Gardner said. “All I can keep stressing is this has to be fixed.”

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